Why Jennifer Lawrence Refused to Lose Weight for Film Roles by Starving Herself
Jennifer Lawrence has always been candid about her experiences regarding body image in Hollywood. And although many actors were willing to shave weight for features, there was a limit to the weight Lawrence would shed.
Jennifer Lawrence didn’t want to be stick thin for film roles
Lawrence didn’t mind getting into shape for movie roles. She’s used to undergoing changes in her diet and training regimen for films like the X-Men franchise. But in The Hunger Games, Lawrence chose not to shed weight for the role. The series saw her playing impoverished character Katniss Everdeen, who’d go on to become the hero of the series. Given the character’s condition, it might’ve made sense for Katniss to look underfed. But Lawrence didn’t want to promote an unrealistic body image to her fans.
“We have the ability to control this image that young girls are going to be seeing [in The Hunger Games]… girls see enough of this body that they will never be able to obtain… It’s an amazing opportunity to rid ourselves of that in this industry,” she once told BBC.
It was one of the reasons why Lawrence refused to shed too much weight for movies in general. In an interview with Elle (via Yahoo), the actor was fine being the way she was.
“I’m never going to starve myself for a part… I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner,'” she explained. “That’s something I was really conscious of during training, when you’re trying to get your body to look exactly right. I was trying to get my body to look fit and strong- not thin and underfed.”
Jennifer Lawrence wanted to normalize a new body type in Hollywood
Speaking with Harper’s Bazaar, the Oscar-winner shared that she hoped body expectations would change in Hollywood. She felt the training she did to keep herself in peak shape at all times was confused for being the normal look. She looked forward to the day where that wasn’t normalized anymore.
“I would like us to make a new normal-body type,” Lawrence said. “Everybody says, ‘We love that there is somebody with a normal body!’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t feel like I have a normal body.’ I do Pilates every day. I eat, but I work out a lot more than a normal person. I think we’ve gotten so used to underweight that when you are a normal weight it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, she’s curvy.’ Which is crazy. The bare minimum, just for me, would be to up the ante.”
Jennifer Lawrence felt calling people fat should be illegal
Lawrence felt that women of all sizes should’ve been accepted. But she asserted that the mainstream media could make that difficult, as she knew firsthand what it was like to be labeled fat.
“Somebody told me I was fat, that I was going to get fired if I didn’t lose a certain amount of weight,” she once told Time. “They brought in pictures of me where I was basically naked, and told me to use them as motivation for my diet. It was just that.”
Because of this, she felt there should’ve been more thought behind using the word.
“I just think it should be illegal to call somebody fat on TV,” she once said in an interview with Barbara Walters (via E News).
She also wanted to restrict the word for the sake of the younger generation, which was a big part of Lawrence’s motivation.
“I get it, and, and I do it too, we all do it,” she said. “But I think when it comes to the media, the media needs to take responsibility for the effect that it has on our younger generation, on these girls who are watching these television shows, and picking up how to talk and how to be cool, so then all of a sudden being funny is making fun of the girl who’s wearing an ugly dress.”
